Obituary, with support from Pest Control
Obituary, with support from Pest Control
Thekla, Bristol
25/08/2023
Live Review by Richard Oliver
With no local support band, opening the show were the tour support act Pest Control. Hailing from Leeds, the band play crossover thrash and released their debut album “Don’t Test The Pest” earlier in the year. Considering this was still early in the evening, the venue was suitably packed out with a crowd hungry for some metal on this Friday evening. Pest Control suitably delivered with a set bursting with short, sharp thrash attacks which ranged from frenzied bursts of speed to a mid-paced thrashing stomp. The sound was initially very muddy, the guitars buried beneath the bass and drums but this was thankfully rectified and ensured that the band sounded suitably gnarly as the set progressed, with the fearsome bark of Leah Massey-Hay ensuring that these sounds sounded violent and unhinged. Pest Control don’t offer anything new to the thrash table and the crossover style can be quite limiting. Still the band played a very solid set and there were plenty of heads being banged throughout the audience, with new single ‘Enjoy The Show’ being a particular highlight. Pest Control performed a solid set of thrashing goodness which warmed up the crowd ready for some Florida death metal legends.
https://www.facebook.com/pestcontrolleeds/
The term ‘legend’ can be thrown around a bit these days but when it comes to Florida death metallers Obituary it is a term that is rightly deserved and wholeheartedly earned as the band are one of the handful of bands who are responsible for the foundations and creation of the death metal sound. Obituary are also a band that put their own stamp on death metal with a sound and style that is unmistakably them and have earned a massive following as well as releasing some of the most renowned and definitive albums in the history of death metal. So to see Obituary playing in the small confines of Thekla was too good an opportunity to miss and many others must have felt the same, with this being a sold out show. The venue was absolutely bursting with people by the time Obituary hit the stage and the temperature had also risen significantly (thankfully the Thekla’s air conditioning was switched on). The band hit the stage to their standard opener – the chugging and grooving ‘Redneck Stomp’ but here on out it was a bit of a different set from what we usually get with Obituary, with a lot of set staples left out instead focusing on material from the new album “Dying Of Everything” such as ‘Barely Alive’ and ‘My Will To Live’ as well as handpicked songs from some of their later albums including ‘Slow Death’, ‘Sentence Day’ and ‘Visions In My Head’. The band were an incredibly tight unit and looked to be having great fun onstage which is always fantastic to see, as I find it heightens the enjoyment of a live music show when you see the performers enjoying themselves on stage as much as the audience watching them. Guitarists Trevor Peres and Kenny Andrews unleashed a barrage of filthy downtuned riffs and some ripping solos while bassist Terry Butler and drummer Donald Tardy delivered that fat groove which is such a component part of the Obituary sound as well as the unmistakable vocals of frontman John Tardy who still to this day has one of the most unique vocals styles in all of metal. The crowd were suitably up for it as well with bodies surging and slamming as well as a handful of crowd surfers and stage divers, but of course the best reactions were given to the older and classic songs which made their way into the set such as ‘Turned Inside Out’, ‘I’m In Pain’ and the classic ‘Slowly We Rot’. It was fantastic to see Obituary in a small and sweaty venue, and you could tell the band enjoyed playing this show to a small but rabid crowd. The show was over as quickly as it started and I could have easily watched the band play for 4 hours as Obituary are easily one of my favourite death metal bands. A fantastic evening of old school death metal filth.
https://www.facebook.com/ObituaryBand/
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